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The majority of dog owners have experienced their animal begging at the dinner table. No matter how much you love your puppy, this is a behavior, which you just shouldn’t tolerate. Especially if you have guests over, then your dog should be calm and leave everyone be during their meal.

There’s a lot said about being the pack leader. This term describes making sure your dog is aware that you are the one who is in charge of your household. Many dogs male and female will attempt to show their dominance by taking your food right off your plate. This is a usual problem when you have guests over, they turn there back to talk to someone sitting next to them, and instantly they loose there main course faster than you can say “what just happened”.

The biggest issue is occasionally feeding your dog from the dinner table is a bad habit to start. Owners often justify this behavior saying, “it’s just once in a while”, or even “I rarely do this but”. These are all bad excuses because it leads to a negative learned behavior for your dog. As the owner you must lead by example if you expect your dog to behave all the time, if you expect consistency out of your animal.

Now if your dog is well trained in general and listens to commands such as lie down, stay, heel, etc., then you do have the option of just making sure your animal follows your commands, its best to ask them to lie down above all else, this helps reinforce dominance in your relationship, it reminds the dog you’re the pack leader. Then, whatever you do it will follow suit and listen as closely as possible. If you do however notice your dog start to get up from the laying down position, curb that immediately and remind them to stay lying down while your feeding them.

Ultimately, you have to remain diligent with your dog and cannot be inconsistent. Your dog learns and remembers things via repetition and consistency. Practice this at every family meal, do it often enough prior to having any company over. Once you establish your guidelines with your dog when you are eating at the dinner table, everyone will be happier for it. Dogs need rules boundaries and limitations to feel complete. This is how it is in the wild, or if you have a pack of dogs, the dominant animal is going to let the rest of the pack know when something they are doing is disruptive, or making them feel uncomfortable, so it might feel like your being cruel sometimes to your dog, but they absolutely need this to be happy and healthy.